I have mixed feelings about these too.  I could figure out lock (shift lock),
sun (brightness), half moon (contrast between highlighted/non-highlighted),
(1,0) on/off, and the variety of arrows for tab, backtab, carriage return,
linefeed, newline.  The cute proof readers marks for insert and delete
characters required me to think a little.  I couldn't figure out for the
life of me what the knob with the AND gate on it was (bell volume) or the
trapasoid with the lines inside it (key click) were.

Another problem is even though some great American (english) mind thinks
these are great symbols, are they really culture independant?

An example, when in Italy I drove quite few different European cars.  All
had controls and idiot lights with Icons.  Again it was guess work that the
cross shaped thing was the choke on the truck I was driving.  The pretty
much standard oil light and a funny thing on it that looked like what I use
to water my plants.  What I think of when I think OIL CAN is a hemispherical
container with a long neck protruding from the center of the sphere.  So it
was quite a while before I reasoned what that was.

-Ron

        Once again you're are missing the point about icons.  The idea is
        that once you know what they mean you can recognize them much faster
        than the equivalent words.  I don't know of anyone who claims that
        that icons are immediately and precisely recognisable.

        Think how much worse shape you would have been in if the chokes in
        the various cars had been labelled in the the language of the
        country where the car was made.  I know the problem; I was born in
        Europe.  It's not easy.  That's why we developed standard pictorial
        road signs and in-car controls.  The fact that you can recognise the
        pictorial road sign much faster than the equivalent string of words
        (even when they are in a language you understand) helps enormously too.
--
        Mark
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